Latest News
Do you enjoy reading LAB articles?
Sadly, the best things in life are not always for free. LAB needs your help to survive
Brazil
2. The ‘flying rivers’ could run dry
In the second of her Amazon on the Brink blogs, LAB author and editor Sue Branford looks at the climate science and relays the warning from veteran climatologist James Hanson about the dangers of a ‘super El Niño’, and the consequences for the rainforest. Fires, though often set deliberately, are now a greater danger than deforestation.
1. The road to destruction
In the first of a new series of blogs, LAB author and editor Sue Branford returns to the subject closest to her heart: the survival of the Amazon rainforest and the communities and peoples that live there – a matter of crucial importance not only for themselves, for Brazil and the other countries of the Amazon basin, but for the planet and the climatic and ecosystems on which human life depends.
Brazil: Fishing for recognition
Fishing communities in Brazil are demanding legal recognition of 'marétorios' as Marine Spatial Planning and offshore wind expansion threaten traditional territories and livelihoods in the Amazônia Azul.
Brazil: 30 years since the Eldorado massacre
30 years since the massacre by military police of landless workers at Eldorado do Carajás, in Pará, Brazil, life remains precarious and dangerous. Pará state has seen over 1,000 murdered in the last 45 years. Impunity still reigns.
Brazil: The Amazon hunger paradox
The Amazon produces vast quantities of food, yet millions still face hunger. This article examines the links between environmental justice, inequality, food sovereignty, and COP30 in Brazil, arguing that the issue is not production, but the system that governs distribution.
In other news
Environmental Defenders
Projects
Brazil’s landless: Pathways to Utopia
Sue Branford reviews Alex Ungrateeb Flynn's book Pathways to Utopia - Time and Transformation in the Landless Workers' Movement of Brazil.
Brazil’s MST: Activism and Utopia
Jasmine Haniff reviews Alex Ungprateeb Flynn’s book about Brazil’s landless worker’s movement, which offers a compelling framework for understanding how a social movement can develop an alternative collective future, through decades of grassroots struggle.
Art Against Extraction: ATRATO by Juan Covelli
ATRATO by Juan Covelli runs until 22 February 2026 at the V&A Photography Centre in South Kensington, London. Admission is free.
Journalism and the Politics of Memory
Marcos Colón reviews the Cannes and Golden Globe award-winning Brazilian film The Secret Agent, directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho, starring Wagner Moura. The film engages questions of state censorship, political repression, and surveillance not by following a reporter chasing a story, but, this time, by following a man hunted by a system terrified of memory.
The Congress of the Disappeared: An exploration of a nation’s ghosts
'What The Congress of the Disappeared ultimately shows us is that Brazil is a nation that has never truly reconciled with its past. Now...
Unravelling the thread from colonial England to Uruguay in Monica Perez’s...
In her latest project COST, Monica Perez unravels the thread between England and Uruguay, exploring the raw wool trade and the displacement and erasure of Indigenous communities.
The Congress of the Disappeared: An exploration of a nation’s ghosts
'What The Congress of the Disappeared ultimately shows us is that Brazil is a nation that has never truly reconciled with its past. Now...
Book Launch: The Congress of the Disappeared by Bernardo Kucinski 7...
Join LAB, Brazil Matters, and Amnesty International UK Latin America coordinators for the launch of Bernardo Kucinski's novella 'The Congress of the Disappeared', translated...
The Amazon in Times of War, an urgent call to action
‘The Amazon in Times of War’ is a powerful indictment of institutional violence against the Amazon and a tribute to the resilience and defiance...
Listening to Women Resisting Violence
On International Women's Day, LAB and King’s College London release a bonus episode of our podcast, Women Resisting Violence, discussing the power of podcasting for social change with leading audio producers from Latin America and representatives from the fearless women’s organisations featured in the podcast.
Veronica Gago on feminist power
Jelke Boesten, leader of the Gender Studies Network at King’s College London and a researcher on the Women Resisting Violence project, joins Veronica Gago of Argentina's #NiUnaMenos to discuss how to bring feminist activism into the everyday.
Step Up Migrant Women
This week's episode focuses on migrant women in the UK with insecure immigration status who are experiencing domestic abuse.
Ka’apor and Quilombola Communities in Brazil
Documentary film: We Fight For This Land: Ka’apor and Quilombola Communities in Brazil (62”, 2024)Directors: Cahal McLaughlin and Siobhán Wills
Quilombo and Indigenous Ka’apor communities...
FILM: The Future is in Our Territories
In a new LAB film, environmental defenders discuss their territorial work and the Americas-wide alliance for racial and climate justice
Brazil: illegal mining pollutes Tapajós
The explosion of mining in the mid-section of the Tapajós River is most likely the cause of the change in water color in Alter...
